The Michael Canfield Channel

Latest "Heroes" review

My review of Heroes episode 19, ".07%" is now up on TVSquad.

Technopleasantries

For International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day I've posted two free stories. Each contains a nice illustrative photo, and some attempt at elegant presentation.

Peas and Carrots, was originally published in Realms of Fantasy, Feb 2005, and is one some nice people seemed to like. It also one of three stories I presented to SFWA to obtain my active membership status.

Think of a Pink Ship, contains adult content and has never before been published. (An editor once rejected it with the prediction that it would be published somewhere, sometime, and by someone. He is now proven right, even though it falls to me to be that someone.)

Both stories are released under a Creative Commons License.

Find links to other participants' stories here.

Technopeasants Unite!

(image by marydell)

technopeasant
sfwa

Update: I've decided to close comments now, because of all that spam this post has attracted!

Sleep ...

... didn't happen last night. I did some work this morning in preparation for tomorrow's big free content experience but now I'm about done in. I was thinking about catching "Hot Fuzz" or some other movie, but my limbs feel like rubber now, so I ain't going nowhere. So Plan B is to ...
ahh I forgot Plan B already ...

Monday April 23rd is In't'l Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day

Jo Walton has come up with an excellent plan in reaction to SFWA office-holder Dr. Hendrix's self-described "rant" over what he calls webscabs -- which under his sweep includes many many professional writers. In short, Walton is inviting members of SFWA and others to participate in IPSTP Day by giving away "professional quality work" online in order to "celebrate our technopeasanthood." [via Scalzi.]

I will post a new SF story, "Think of A Pink Ship," under a Creative Commons License of some sort, right here, on Monday April, 23rd.


Technorati Tags: science fiction, technopeasant, fiction, free, creative commons,
sfwa.

Vonnegut on "Psychopathic Personalities," or "PPs"

Via digg, from an In These Times interview that Vonnegut gave in 2003:

[Snip] What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

Reminds me a little of Yeats' famous lines:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity

So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut

Rest in Peace

New Story

Today I wrote a draft of a short short story "People with Earplugs" about a thousand words. It's a little rough*, as it's been a long time since I've done anything of much interest outside work on my two novels-in-progress. Though I hope to get off this extended micro-fiction kick and start writing longer short stories again eventually, it certainly felt great to come to the end of a piece of fiction again. I estimate the final draft will be around 1500 words, as a scrimped on details here and there. Either that or it will be a thousand words in final draft as well, however they may be substantially different words than those I have now.



* Pretty crappy actually, but there is a worthwhile concept on display, for all of that crude execution.

Extrasolar planets

According to Wikipedia, as on this month 218 planets outside this solar system have been discovered.

Your own private Annika

The most recent read I've enjoyed most is Bob Harris' Prisoner of Trebekistan. It's a book about the author's experience playing Jeopardy, only it's about a lot of other things too.  Harris is a life-embracing kind of guy. He's also a fine writer, funny, honest, and thoughtful. In this passage Harris looks back at the day he met his current girlfriend with the certain knowledge that that relationship is now over, though neither will admit it to the other yet:

I had met Annika in a coffee shop in Cleveland a couple of years earlier. Her eyes were the same color as my drink that day, and are now the color of whatever type of coffee you like best. (No matter what I write, you'll conjure your own private Annika anyway. All I ask is that you make her anatomically correct, petite, and extraordinarily lovely. Whatever shade of coffee you would find the prettiest, that is the correct color for your Annika's eyes. Her hair, however, is the same color as the hair of someone you loved once and no longer know.) My own personal Annika had eyes which were one cream with a touch of cocoa. Which is to say: eyes you'd consider spending your whole life looking at.

Harris makes a lot of friends in the years he was involved with a TV show, has a lot of adventures, and even find true love with a Hugo-winning-Buffy-writer. Not that the path of true love is ... well, just read it and see for yourself.

2007: The Year Green Tea Broke

Funny article in Salon about the newest panacea: green tea. I've noticed racks and racks of new green-tea products filling the supermarket shelves in the past few weeks. I thought GT was big already, but it got bigger. My favorite will probably always be green tea ice cream, which is extraordinarily tasty, though I guess that is not the point.